Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Kawai Novus NV10 - Hands On

Excellent video, and thank you! This assembly video marks the Kawai NV10S off my list, as I am looking for a digital piano that I can place in the centre of my music room. I’m surprised the back of the piano is so un-done. The Yamaha AvantGrand N1X or CVP-809 is looking like my best option.

Are you referring to the non-polished back panels?

If so, this was also the case for the original NV10, and I believe it is true of the AvantGrand N1X also.

Kind regards,
James
x

An ugly back panel is a detail that does not impact such a wonderful instrument.

+1

It does not affect the great and unique playing experience, it does not impact the good sound quality. But it significantly affects the aesthetic look of the NV10(s).

If Kawai added a decent finish on the back side, it will allow us to place the Piano in more orientations such as facing the room.

The fact that Yamaha does the same, does not make it right.

buy N3X… if you want more, you need to pay more.
nv10 with polished finish in the back will still make this piano ugly from behind, it’s made for against wall placement i think…
If they make a curvy back, it will look nice but use more space… like it is, is perfect for me.

The back looks like every upright piano ever made.So it's as right as it gets.

I'm Seif and TexasBear here.
The back panel of the NV10 looks a bit disappointing for a 8k-10k€ instrument, at least in my opinion.

Since it's an esthetics opinion, noone has the right answer. I personally wouldn't mind paying a bit more for a nicer finish. The NV5 for instance is gorgeous from the back - of course thanks to the soundboard - so it's not an impossible task.
Maybe we'll see what an NV20 brings to the table 😁.

I have a question: how many ‘uprights’ have y’all seen sitting in the middle of a room as the center-piece of a household? I’ll answer this for you, 0!

Uprights are meant to go up against a wall; heck, even the unpacking instructions clearly state this, “for optimal results please place up against a wall”.

So please go somewhere else with these non-issues because I’ve had enough of this constant bickering and nagging over nothing.

Have y’all looked at the back of a fridge? Newsflash, it’s not finished, and this is for the same reason an upright’s tushy is not finished; no one looks back there!

But, an NV10 pretends to be a grand!?

Oh my! I find myself agreeing with Pete14.
"This is the big one. You hear that? I'm coming to join you, Elizabeth!"

It's a hybrid on many levels

Yes, the NV-10 has a true grand action. It also has a sound engine that features a premium grand.

However, one thing I recently noticed was that its design aesthetic is taken from Kawai's premium uprights. If you look at the front the piano, from the fallboard/cheek design to the front legs, they seem directly taken from the K700/K800 uprights, with silver hardware. This is IMO one of the nicest, understated contemporary stylings for an upright piano (I'm really not a fan of the accordion-foldings, gold hinge plates across the whole front kind of look on most uprights).

Since this is my first post here, I'll chime in with a neutral answer that while the back side of the NV 10 doesn't present anything other than what the back of an old TV, radio or other electronic device looked like, it's still not very attractive. However, I'm certain that Kawai did not intend it to be in the middle of the room.

It is, after all, an electronic instrument, which means it has a power plug, and if you don't have a floor plate in the middle of the room, then you'll be dealing with extension cords. That's a bigger problem to me.

But from my teaching days, I inherited a classroom upright that a previous soul had attached some burlap-like cloth (perhaps old-school speaker cloth?) to cover the back of the piano they had apparently found aesthetically displeasing. I didn't care either way, so I kept it on there for years. Perhaps if aesthetics is the primary reason to have a piano in the room, then some form of creative covering or even a divider shelf unit could be added to cover the offending side.

But I've had my NV10 now for about three months, sitting in the foyer against the wall, and I'd want no other piano for my daily use.

Congrats! Welcome to PW, and to the NV-10 club

I'm one of the few who probably do NOT have their NV-10 directly against the wall. It's 45 degrees against a corner, but one of the walls making up the corner is a full-room-length mirror (for reasons only the previous owner of our house knows), so I get to see that glorious unfinished backside every time I sit and play. It's fine, whatever.

I have my Mac Mini mounted in such a way that look at the mirror to see the back of the piano in order to see the power-on LED of the Mac, just to make sure it's still running, before I sit down to play.

Hello Jerry, welcome to the forum!

I do recall an NV10 customer who covered the backpanels with a gloss black material, creating a polished look. This could be an option for customers who require such an aesthetic in order to place the instrument in their home.

Kind regards,
James
x

Note that the black panel above the NV5/NV5S soundboard uses the same finish as the NV10/NV10S.

Kind regards,
James
x

Thanks to Gombessa and James for your welcomes!

I bought the NV10 as a retirement present to myself, wanting a digital with the best "feel" and finding the NV-10 the closest to what I was looking for. As so many others have said, (wow that took a LOT of reading to be able to say), it really came down to Kawai vs Yamaha, and while I was actually quite surprised when I tried out the N1X as not being as bad to play on as the old Motif line and the various Clavinovas I've had to deal with in my various venues, but it still felt less of what I wanted than what the Kawai touch offered. When I played with that action, I felt like I'd come home.

Mind you, I've played many of the great acoustical pianos over the years, with my sensual favorites being my teacher's Schimmel back in the 70s, and more recently a 6'2" Bluthner which I played on nearly every day for the last 32 years. Of course, a Bosendorfer Imperial Grand was also a buttery delight, (which I got to play while accompanying a contralto for the Met Auditions) but that thing's just too big! Bottom line, I like lighter actions (versus the heavier one of Steinway products, for example) and I've always enjoyed playing Japanese grands in general (if they've been well maintained). The Novus NV-10 just feels good under my fingers.

I'm happy to say that my unit came with firmware 1.02m and I've had none of the issues you earlier adopters had to work through, including pedal spring tension, speaker buzzes and so on. Having retired to the Pacific Northwest (Washington) in November, I found very few dealers who could offer one and had to wait about two months for one nearby to get their own floor model to try out. My order took almost exactly two months to arrive after I purchased it, but part of that was probably due to the seaport tie-up experienced all along the West Coast (US) during that time.

Two muscular movers brought it from the store, where they'd assembled it and checked it out first. The first thing that struck me is that this is NOT a simple piano to move. I'm not sure the case designers thought much about how the instrument might be moved around, which is a shame from my former standpoint as a teacher. But it's a moot point for me now: the instrument, as I said in my earlier post, resides in the foyer in an alcove alongside a staircase and will likely stay there forever.

Yes, I might've been able to fit a baby grand in there, but I live with my daughter's family now and it was imperative that I have an instrument I could play on at any time of day or night without disturbing the family.

As a former church organist, I echo the sentiments of those complaining about the settings preferences. Organ registration with pistons is simply the best way to set up a complex instrument the way you want it, and I, too, wonder why a UI model like that, which has been around for generations in the organ world (pipe organs do it, too!), is roundly ignored by digital piano makers. You don't need the actual pistons, of course, but having settings that map to specific registers in memory, that can be isolated and changed directly, is easily done in digital programming and shouldn't require more than a moment's thought to reset by the performer.

Nevertheless, I also appreciate that the setting presets that are installed are sufficiently diverse that you can hear (and feel) significant differences in the range of possibilities programmed into the system, and since I intend to also interface with my DAW, I'm pleased so far at just how clean the sound comes through the audio chain.

As to the thread about slow-fall fallboards, all I can say is that more than once I ruined a recording take when the fallboard on the Bluthner was accidentally slammed close, as well as occasionally ruining a prayerful moment in church when the same thing happened there. I, too, have a 3-year-old (grandson) who has already slammed the lid of the piano bench on his fingers but besides that, there really is a real-world value to having a slow-fall lid.

I also like the music desk on the NV-10. Uprights with the music holder that folds out of the fallboard are the worst, and the wire-backed ones on stage pianos are not much better. I write music at the piano, so I need a flexible-angled desk that's sufficiently strong to stand up to Beethoven-like angry erasures as well as multiple (note)books and scores sitting there at once. I preferred the Kawai desk to the Yamaha desk, too. Slightly larger overall, multiple angles and sturdy, with the hinges butted onto the back side - they did it right! Even full-sized grands, with their little cabinet hinges often attached in front don't hold up without great care being exercised.

That was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

Enjoy your family, the NV10, and retirement.

God Bless,
David

I just like the Kawai action much much much more than any other action.

Actually, the only piano action that I liked a little bit better than the Kawai NV10 was a $200k Bluthner.

I agree, if I want more, I pay more. I just think that a better finish on the back will be a marginal upcharge, not something that would put the NV10 on a different price category.

And to put things in perspective, I don't mean to be complaining or nagging.
Buying the Kawai NV10 is one of the best things I have ever done to myself. I am so happy with it, and if time goes back, I would do the exact same thing.
I am a happier person because I get to play on the NV10 every evening. It's a blessing that I am so grateful for.

But yet, there can be a few things that I wish there were added, to make it even better and even closer to being 100% perfect.
I am planning to play with some friends who play guitar, drums, sax,... It would be nice if I was facing them and able and interact with them without twisting my neck.

Have a good day everyone.